I’m not sure what’s going on with me. I don’t feel like drawing or writing. My appetite isn’t the best, and I still haven’t bothered with Christmas cards. I’m not motivated to do a single thing.

I’ve a ton of pics from my international holiday fest to put up, and I don’t feel like it. Most of my holiday decorations are shoved willy-nilly on my dusty bookshelves and not prettily arranged. I have a new Stephen King book…well, yes, I do want to read that. Maybe that’s the reason I don’t want to do anything? I’d like to comfortably immerse myself in his world.

Maybe I’m really feeling the loss of a friend. I met him once fifteen years ago, but we’d met up on Facebook. He was 44, handsome and funny, and I was trying to get him to visit Ireland and go diving off the coast of Mayo. He was the best and childhood friend of my ex-boyfriend (and ex-employer, and good friend still). He killed himself around Thanksgiving and wasn’t found for a week. I only found out on Tuesday.

I know I’m over emotional right now – the holiday charity commercials are making me tear up. Especially the one for the Salvation Army with the sad, lonely old woman. I know she’s an actor, but ouch, she gets to me. Good thing I haven’t seen any ads for Cat’s Trust yet this year, or any animal shelters. I’d be in bits.

Tonight should be Oirish Tirsday: my phone call to Socks while iDJ spins the mp3’s upstairs. But, she’s gone home for an early Christmas with her family and to assist her mother in law’s recovery from knee surgery. Maybe I’m a bit lonely after the excitement of the week? Maybe I am, as Socks put it, grieving for my upcoming loss of our weekly marathon phone call? How horrible to grieve about less time with a friend when the reason is one that makes the friend so happy.

Maybe I also think I am an arsehole for feeling that way, if I do. I’m not sure….I knew it was coming, after all.

Maybe I’m also mourning the loss of having most of my time to myself. I have a job again. I’ll be stuck back into a rigid structure not of my own devising. I’ll have to do what others say, when they say it. I’ll have to talk on the phone and eat lunch at a specific time.

I’ll have to put on a bra every day. The horror.

It sucks being broke, but man, I did like not having to work for someone else. I came up with a bunch of business ideas so I didn’t have to work for anyone else, but until the art came along my hubby was not supportive of any of my schemes.

And now that I have found the art, I have to leave it for a 9-5. Sigh.

I noticed a lot of bloggers seemed a bit down two weeks ago. There seemed to be a run of posts about loss at the end of November. Maybe I’m a bit slow and am only now getting to that place.

I do miss my family, as small as it is. Maybe that makes it harder, to only have a few close to you and be so far from them. I’d love to hug my dad and have one of his homebrewed beers, his roast beef and Yorkshire Pudding, his traditional Christmas morning cinnamon buns. I’d love to share my niece’s second Christmas – this time I think she’s old enough to start to feel the magic. I miss my mother, always.

Here in Ireland, I miss being able to afford going out to the pub and having a great time with everyone in the town. Everyone showing off their new clothes or jewellery, old friends and family returned home for the week, lots of laughter and drink and of course, the craic. We drink a lot here because that’s where you meet everyone and all the best stories are made. It’s hard to explain until you’ve experienced it. Socks visited once, she understands now. My father would cut off his foot to move here for it.

Maybe I feel the weight of so much change and flux bearing down upon me. I’m not so sure I like as much change as I used to.

Maybe it’s just the good old holiday blues.